mother pounds the fallen awolowo leaves to proffer healing to deciduous hopes of her children. strife is her mortar and love, her pestle. thump! thump! it goes with tender violence, thumps of soothing relief to build bridges between the broken skin on their elbows and knees. it begins to find rebirth in verdant vibrancy, the leaves levitate in a ghoulish jaunt to life flamed by the maternal crucible of mother.

I must admit that when Sabeeha Hussain hit me up on a random Thursday evening to review her book, I was excited at the new project and offered myself to be led by it and boy did she lead, on an epic odyssey. So let’s get right to it. The…

(the trial of brother Jethro’s wife) before they bury us in stones, remember, Wathint’Abazi Wathint’imbokodo – when you strike a woman, you strike a rock. we gave our bodies to the sea waiting and waiting for the waves to wash over our sins and bring back our virginity. we gave…

I grew up thinking that the body of a woman is a house, not a home. an abandoned house around the corner, a repository for beautiful broken things, walk too briskly and you’d miss it. it must have been that first night Mother neatly folded sobs between her wrappers and carefully placed them locked in a box deep breaths and a despondent smile as she walked out and dared a lion to bare his teeth. she must have forgotten she was a pacifist.

Brother Jethro always said, a man should never let a woman see his weakness or turn his body into a river for her to swim safely across. if this is indeed true, then I am not a man… because I turned into water, when she touched me there- drew me into her body and urged me to swim for shore. I was eight and gasping for air, she was seventeen and didn’t care. On stranger tides between her thighs